Exploration game

RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS

elaborate

RIFTS!

I believe this is what they're referring to.

I do not see how a pen and paper RPG applies to my problem.

Are you considering doing a pure exploration game (ie. no fighting ogres, or managing stats)? If so, I would be very interested in that.

Well, I will allow interaction with the world, and combat will be possible (probably), although not central to the game. Although I can guarantee there will be no ogres. I want to keep stat management to a minimum, atleast in an rpg sense (so the game does not revolve around it). Honestly I have not thought much about those aspects yet. I am mostly thinking about how exploration and interaction with a large interesting world would be fun and addictive.

good minigames = fun time

Take a look at "Heart of Africa" or "Seven Cities of Gold" from C64!

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Original post by Endurion"Seven Cities of Gold"

Not ideas, but questions to hopefully spur some ideas:

What scale of exploration do you want? Exploring a single valley or other geographic feature? A city? A whole continent? A world? Solar system? This will influence or be influenced by the type of game you make. If it's small-scale exploration you'll want fine details--probably a first-person game, so the player becomes intimately familiar with the landscape.

What is the purpose of exploring? Survival? Knowledge? Personal gain? Your side quests play a role in this question.

At what point does futuristic stop being okay? What kinds of weapons, vehicles or gadgets would be allowed and what would not be? Personal hovercraft? Energy weapons? Implants?

Are you planning for a single, very immersive experience? Or a more dynamic, replayable game?


As for specific ideas:

You are an investigator in a large city. You need to become familiar with the city and its inner workings. You have to build relationships with people to get what you need.

You're a soldier. You get wounded and left with the dead. You wake up alone and have to scrounge for supplies to survive and get back with the army while avoiding enemy patrols. Typical behind-enemy-lines stuff.

You're a pilot for the navy. Your job is to explore a new world for possible colonization.


Get any ideas from all that?

Try getting hold of a copy of Gothic 2. I know its a fantasy game but the world scape is quite large (not as large as the third game promises to be but thats a different matter) and the game is quite freeform (although like all games you are forced down a vague path to the end of the game it rivals fallout style in how you do it).

Might help for inspiration as most of the game is a make up of sub-quests, then again the same with fallout 1+2 I suppose.

You want much exploration but not a huuuge programming/creation effort. Definately look into what procedural methods have to offer and base your game around those possibilities. Landscapes are good, cities harder but doable. Lots and lots of NPC's probabely hard (lest they get boring and very much all the same). -- So something with a low population density. Nagaa's soldier-behind-the-lines idea would fit in with this.

As for technology, I am going back and forth between world war 2 level and slightly futuristic. Not to the point of energy weapons, however better projectile weapons.

By world war 2 level, I mean technologically. There will be no world war going on, and you wont carry around a garand. But computers will be big and slow, airplanes will have props, people have those circular phone things, etc.

As for scale, global would be nice, just for effect. However most populations will be in dense areas, and the rest of the world will be country.

I was planning on lots of procedural content. If I wanted to it would not be hard to randomly populate the landscape with small towns.

Of course, I want both immersive and dynamic and replayable. However immersive would be better. If I have a huge world, I see no reason to have a random world every new game. I will probably end up doing both. Hand crafting some areas just perfectly, and randomly populating others.

As for the motivation...not sure, and it is really important. Personal gain and power pretty much seem like the only possibilities in a game like this. A definite goal you really wanted to achieve would make the player take the shortest path, and an explorable world would be pointless. If I do go with personal gain, I am not sure what it is your trying to gain though. Money seems kinda overdone.

One feature I was thinking may be nice is you could chose your career. You could do something like become an anthropologist, physicist, join the military, etc. Or a less legal career. But If I had that option, no one would ever chose a legal one.

So basically, I have a lot of crazy ideas, and I need to work out a relativly simple set of them that will provide the most fun.

The soldier behind the lines actually sounds pretty fun. Although I would make that slightly futuristic. Dont need another ww2 game. Not sure what I would go from there. Maybe your side was defeated and your country conquered. The survivors accept their defeat, and you are left in a very very different culture (of the winners), where you have to do...something. Human culture though, just a strange one. I dont like aliens, alteast in this situation.

yeah, one good option that I haven't seen lately would be a spy game, where you don't have to kill or anything, just try to get through unnoticed without using martial arts. Placed between WWII and the real cold war, but not totaly to history.

I had a cool notion of a game set *during* a nuclear war - you have the exploration part but whilst you do it there are actually nuclear impacts occuring around you which you must avoid or shelter from - lots of story/mission/campaign elements to choose from there too... Maybe you have information that can stop the war, but you must deliver it to a location far away... hmmm...

[S]

Wow, I like it. The during nuclear war thing is pretty awesome.

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Original post by Ravuya RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS

Suddenly I realize this post is utterly useless. Ok, so it it is another RPG system, and for 25 dollars I could learn about it. What would have been much better is if you said why this game fit my criteria. In conclusion, I hate you and DIE!!!! DIE DIE DIE, asshole DIE! (well, dont actually die).

On another note, CSRPG2 was surprisingly good.